


Revelation

by Vertiga



Series: Flynt Coal the Cat [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Fake AH Crew, Gang Violence, Gen, Gun Violence, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Immortality, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4658367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vertiga/pseuds/Vertiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Los Santos reporter Jon Risinger meets the Immortal Fake AH Crew, looking to write a "day in the life" feature. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelation

‘Jon Risinger, Los Santos Spotlight,’ Jon said, holding out his hand. He was a little nervous, his hand trembling very slightly, but he wasn’t going to back down. He’d seen enough shit that he trusted himself to hold up better than most people did in the face of the Fake AH Crew.

‘Oh yeah, the reporter. You’ve been emailing Lindsay, right?’ Geoff said, shaking hands without standing up or putting down his whiskey. It was a nice Saturday afternoon after a very bloody week, and he was obviously damned if some reporter would make him move more than the bare minimum.

‘That’s right. She invited me along,’ Jon said, looking around the plush penthouse with a mixture of interest and awe. ‘I’ve been covering your work in-depth for a couple of years, and she said you’d be okay with a day-in-the-life kind of thing?’

‘I don’t think a day will be long enough,’ Ryan said. ‘We might have to keep you around a lot longer than that.’ He was wearing his full red and black make-up despite the casual setting, and the feral grin he gave Jon as he spoke was nothing short of predatory.

Jon had the uncomfortable sense of being a doomed mouse, already caught, but being toyed with. The rest of the crew didn’t react, so either they were fine with the reporter in their midst coming to a grisly end, or the Vagabond wasn’t being serious about keeping him.

‘...Okay,’ Jon said eventually, instead of trying to make a run for it. He wasn’t likely to make it out of the crew’s fortress anyway. ‘Well, I’m here until you tell me to get out, because to be honest just walking in here gave me enough to write an article, so my job is looking pretty easy.’

Geoff laughed at that. 

‘Like what you see?’ he asked, gesturing lazily around the open living room. Los Santos was his kingdom but this, the top floor of a downtown apartment block, was Ramsey’s throne room. Most people could only dream of seeing it.

‘It’s uh...’ Jon said, looking round at the gathered crew, casually dressed and sprawled across the sofas as though they weren’t the most dangerous people in the state. There were chips and empty beer bottles on the fancy coffee table, and the massive flat screen was showing Ray and Gavin’s Mario Kart battle rather than some pretentious TV show, chirpy music and fake engine noise providing a low background hum. 

‘It’s more homely than I expected, to be honest. It’s actually true that you all live together?’ 

It had been a rumour forever, but so had a hundred other unlikely things. People talked, and Jon listened.

‘Mostly. We have plenty of other places – sometimes you just need space,’ Lindsay said. She was standing in the kitchen, tearing the cardboard off a new crate of beer, and she waved a bottle at Jon enquiringly.

‘No, thanks, I can’t drink beer,’ Jon said, the words coming out with practised ease. He’d said them often enough.

‘Oh god, you’re not sober like these idiots, are you?’ Geoff asked, pointing accusingly at Ray and Ryan. 

Ray took one hand off his controller for long enough to flip Geoff off, then went right back to destroying Gavin at Mario Kart.

‘No, I drink, but I’m allergic to wheat.’

‘Oh, no problem,’ Lindsay said. ‘We have hard cider, or rum and mixers. Do you want a drink?’

‘Cider’s great, thanks,’ Jon said, grateful that they weren’t making a big deal out of it. He’d known gangs to be horribly insulted by a newcomer refusing a drink, and he wasn’t in the mood to make himself sick just to fit in.

‘Sit the fuck down, you’re making the place look untidy,’ Michael said, pointing Jon to a free space on one of the massive sofas. There was a black ball of fur on his lap, and when Jon moved past him to sit down, it uncurled and looked at him with impassive green eyes.

‘Nice cat,’ Jon said lamely, oddly surprised to see something as ordinary as a pet cat. He might have expected giant killer guard dogs, or a tank full of sharks, but a cat didn’t fit the crew’s level of theatricality.

‘You’re not allergic to those too, are you?’ Geoff demanded.

‘No, I’m okay.’

‘Good. Ryan doesn’t tolerate visitors who don’t like his cat.’

‘He lives here too,’ Ryan said flatly.

Jon couldn’t think of a reply to that, so he sat quietly for a minute, thanking Lindsay for the cold bottle of pear cider she brought over. His throat was dry with nerves, and it was a relief to take a long swig.

Michael pulled Lindsay down beside him, and she leaned against his side and kissed his cheek. It looked automatic, as thoughtless as the way she absently petted the cat in his lap, and Jon couldn’t help but let his eyes widen.

‘What?’ Michael demanded, scowling.

‘Uh, you’re together,’ Jon said.

‘So?’

‘There are rumours about all of you and what relationships you might have. It’s kind of my job to know them all, and a lot of people will be interested to know that there’s at least one actual couple in the crew.’

‘Gavin, come here and kiss me,’ Geoff demanded, making grabby hands towards the lad. ‘We can make the conservatives mad.’

‘Piss off Geoff,’ Gavin said, not bothering to get up.

‘I think the God Squad have better reasons to hate us than homophobia,’ Jack pointed out.

Jon perked up at that. ‘Was that what sparked the feud with the Vagos last year?’ he asked. ‘Religious dispute?’

Ryan laughed, a low and unpleasant sound. ‘You could say that.’

‘I hope those fuckers burn in their own personal hell,’ Jack said vehemently, squeezing her beer so hard that her knuckles went white.

Everyone looked suddenly angry, and Jon was surprised that a crew they had effectively wiped out could still rile them up so easily.

‘That’s some serious bad blood,’ he said. ‘Mind if I ask what happened?’

‘When people first realised we were immortal, the Vagos didn’t take it well. Catholicism doesn’t like any power that can’t be proven to come from God, right? They used the fact that I couldn’t stay dead to make things... unpleasant for me,’ Ryan said, his voice flat and hard. ‘When I recovered, we taught them a lesson.’

‘You killed two hundred people in a day, burned down six warehouses and four entire blocks of houses in Rancho, and completely reshaped the cocaine trade in the Western US,’ Jon recited, recalling his own article at the time. ‘That’s a hell of a lesson.’

‘Trust me, they earned it,’ Lindsay said.

‘Good fucking riddance,’ Geoff agreed.

Jon sat silently for a minute, wondering what could happen to an immortal that would deserve such an extreme revenge, and quickly decided that he didn’t want to know. Journalistic curiosity only went so far.

‘So it was definitely a personal attack, not for their business interests?’ he said eventually. ‘Because I’m sure you’re making a lot of money with them out of the picture.’

‘Hell yeah it was personal,’ Jack said. ‘If we needed their territory we’d have taken it before. We were happy to leave them alone.’

‘I’m curious about that,’ Jon said, leaning forward. ‘Everyone knows you own this city, but you don’t run a monopoly. Why is that?’

‘Fuck that game,’ Ray muttered, drawing a laugh from the crew.

‘Why would we bother?’ Geoff said. ‘It’s far easier to let the small timers in than to try and hold every street corner. The big stuff is ours, the supply routes and the information, that’s all that really matters.’

‘You do have other people working directly with you, then? I keep hearing different things on that.’

‘Yeah, we’ve got a whole circle,’ Jack said. ‘Some of them need to stay secret, but the others don’t care. If you come around again, you might meet a couple of them. They’re here pretty regularly.’

‘Jeremy owes me a Mario Party rematch,’ Michael said. ‘He fucking cheated.’

‘How do you cheat at Mario Party?’ Gavin asked.

‘I don’t know, but he fucking does!’

Jon laughed, taken by surprise by Michael’s passion for something so trivial. There were multiple consoles on neat shelves under the flat screen, but clearly he’d underestimated their importance.

‘Is that how you wind down, playing games?’ he asked.

‘And drinking,’ Geoff added.

‘And weed,’ said Ray.

‘And drinking _and_ weed, _and_ games,’ Jack said, laughing. ‘But yeah, we play a lot.’

‘What kind of games are you drawn to?’ Jon asked, sensing a way to connect with this strange group. ‘I mean, no offence, but you must get your fill of guns and chaos from real life.’

‘Well, that takes care of some of it,’ Ryan said. ‘But there’s a real shortage of aliens around here, you know?’

‘You say that, but didn’t I tell you about that guy with the fucked up super-weed?’ Ray said.

‘I’d love to hear about it,’ Jon invited, and Ray launched into the story of a truly messed up trip.

The conversation flowed easily, and Jon largely let it go where the crew wanted. They proved surprisingly open for a bunch of criminals, but then, they were more or less untouchable. What need did they have for secrecy?

The only tense moment came in the late evening, when the black cat got up off Michael’s lap, stretched languidly and padded across the sofas to investigate Jon. The crew’s attention was like a sudden weight focussed on him as the cat approached, and he had the distinct impression that it would matter enormously what the cat did next.

Jon held out a hand, letting the cat sniff him, and didn’t try to move until it butted its head into his fingers. He pet it carefully, and was rewarded with a throaty, rumbling purr.

‘Huh, I guess you get to live,’ Ryan said, and it didn’t sound like he was joking.

‘Really?’ Jon asked, several bottles of cider making him bold. ‘You kill people if the cat doesn’t like them?’

‘Flynt Coal might not be an ordinary cat,’ Geoff said, ‘but I’ll cut your balls off if that makes the press, you hear me?’

‘Jesus, okay,’ Jon said. ‘Strictly confidential, got it. But why’s he different?’

‘He’s like us,’ Lindsay said. ‘He died, and then dug his way out of the grave and came home.’

‘Really? Wow,’ Jon said, looking at the cat with new interest. He’d made a significant study of immortality, and he’d never heard of an animal that could come back from the dead.

‘He was the first immortal any of us knew.’

Jon kept stroking Flynt Coal's soft fur, marvelling at the idea that the entire crew centred on their cat.

‘I guess that cuts down on the heartbreak of outliving your pet, right?’

Gavin laughed. ‘It also cuts down on the consequences of chucking him off the roof when he’s being a git.’

Ryan looked suddenly thunderous, and Gavin squawked and held up his hands.

‘I wouldn’t! I swear I wouldn’t, it’s a joke!’

‘Jesus, Gavin, don’t joke about hurting the cat,’ Lindsay groaned. ‘I’d ask if you have a death wish, but we all know the answer to that.’

‘Are you the most reckless crew member, Gavin?’ Jon asked, and was immediately met with a chorus of groans.

‘This motherfucker,’ Geoff said, pointing a finger at Gavin. ‘Holds the record for most deaths in a single heist.’

‘Why’s that?’ Jon asked, and they were off, telling story after story of Gavin’s reckless adventures. Jon sat with the miraculous cat in his lap and listened delightedly. 

 

*

 

Many hours and many drinks later, the night was winding down. Most of the crew were pleasantly drunk and half asleep, and Jon was fuzzily thinking about which of the hundred incredible stories he would share with the public, and which he would keep for himself. He felt peculiarly possessive of the open trust the crew had shown him.

‘Come on, I’ll drive you home,’ Ryan said, standing up and grabbing a set of keys off the messy table.

‘No, it’s okay, I’ll call a cab,’ Jon offered uncomfortably, getting slowly to his feet.

‘We already know where you live, Risinger,’ Ryan said, letting all his teeth show when he grinned. He seemed incapable of not being creepy at random moments, and Jon still couldn’t tell if it was a deliberate scare tactic or just Ryan being Ryan.

‘Oh. Okay,’ Jon said, a little unsettled. Obviously, he assumed the crew would have checked his background before just letting him stroll into their penthouse, but he hadn’t quite thought through what that meant.

Jon patted his pockets, checking for his keys, phone and wallet, then followed Ryan into the elevator and down to the garage.

The collection of vehicles was impressive, even to someone who’d spent years tracking Fake AH activity. The armoured Roosevelt was immediately familiar, as were several of the flashier super-cars. The black and green Zentorno that Ryan ushered him into was widely known to belong to the Vagabond, and Jon had a strange flash of unreality as he settled into the cradling passenger seat. He was getting a lift home in a super-car driven by one of the most dangerous men in the world. God, what was his life?

Ryan drove silently, navigating the light late-night traffic at several times the legal speed limit without ever making Jon feel unsafe. The finely-tuned car was worthy of its expert driver.

Only when they pulled up outside Jon’s modest apartment block did Ryan speak.

‘We want you to come out with us on Monday, see how things are when we’re not so relaxed,’ he said. ‘Think you can handle that, or are you going to start crying and throw up?’

‘Uh, I can handle it?’ Jon guessed.

Ryan eyed him contemplatively, blue eyes stark in his painted face, then nodded and took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket.

‘Ten am at this address. Don’t bother telling anyone, you don’t even know who we’re going after.’

‘I’m not that stupid,’ Jon promised.

Ryan just hummed, and waved him out of the car. Jon watched him drive away, alcohol and nerves making his stomach turn.

 

*

 

‘Do you want a gun?’ Gavin asked, offering Jon a heavy-looking pistol. It was nothing in comparison to the rifles most of the crew were carrying, but Jon still waved it away.

‘No, journalists don’t carry guns, it’s a rule,’ he said.

‘In a warzone, maybe,’ Geoff said, rolling his eyes. ‘No one gives a shit about rules here, Risinger.’

‘Still no, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Gavin said, holstering the pistol on his thigh instead.

‘Stay back, then,’ Jack said. ‘Try not to make yourself a target.’

Jon nodded, swallowing hard. The crew were gearing up in a parking structure a few blocks from their target – an apartment block apparently used by the Lost as a distribution point for meth. The Fake AH might well be happy to let smaller players run lose in the city, but apparently the Lost had been getting out of hand. 

Geoff had declared a culling operation was in order, and Jon was about to see the Fake AH in all their bloody glory, up close and personal. It seemed a lot more real than his second-hand police reports and aftermath photos.

‘Ready?’ Geoff asked, looking around at the group. Ray was already gone, settled on the roof of the parking garage to provide sniper cover through the front windows of the apartments. Michael and Ryan were set to go in first, causing maximum chaos, and Lindsay, Jack, Gavin and Geoff would follow, clearing the place room by room. 

Jon was surprised by how organised they all seemed. He’d imagined something a little sillier, but they seemed to be taking the operation seriously so far.

‘I have eyes on a lot of assholes, Geoff,’ Ray said through their earpieces. ‘Get in there before I get itchy fingers and ruin the surprise.’

‘Alright, let’s go,’ Geoff ordered, and the Fake AH started up the street, moving casually despite the staggering number of guns and grenades they were carrying. It was a quiet neighbourhood, the street deserted, and it was entirely surreal to Jon to be walking silently into a firefight. The calm before the storm had never seemed so literal, and it couldn’t last.

‘Special delivery!’ Michael hollered when they reached the front of the building. He raised a grenade launcher and shot a barrage of grenades through the ground floor windows. 

The sound of shattering glass and shouting was quickly eclipsed by the deafening boom of exploding grenades.

The shouts turned to panic and the screams of injured bikers, and Ryan was grinning as he kicked open the front door and vanished into the smoke. The rest of the crew followed swiftly behind.

The rapid rattle of gunfire was punctuated by further explosions and the hard crack of sniper rounds flying overhead as Ray targeted people in the upper floors. 

Jon stood outside the building and listened, horrified and fascinated to hear the crew laughing as they cut through the Lost. They might have seemed organised and civilised before, but no one could deny how much fun they were having now they were in the thick of things.

‘Staying outside, Jon?’ Lindsay asked, then whooped as something on the second floor exploded.

‘No, I’m coming,’ Jon said. It seemed stupid to come so far and then lurk in the street outside. He took a deep breath and plunged into the smoke.

The apartments looked like a set from a war movie; shattered furniture and blood splatter on the walls, crumpled bodies on the floor, and a thick haze of dust and smoke like a bad special effect meant to add drama to the scene. 

Jon picked his way through, taking in the carnage and noting that Gavin’s intel seemed to have been correct. All the bodies wore the leather vests of the Lost, and there were crates filled with plastic packages of meth crystals. Jon couldn’t help but wonder how the raid was going to reshape the city’s drug trade, even as he stepped over a severed arm and started up the stairs. The crew were well ahead of him, and he walked a little faster to catch up. 

He could hear them talking in his ear, just brief warnings about enemies rallying, or a room not yet checked, and they sounded so comfortable with each other. They were almost as relaxed as they had been at home.

‘There’s one hiding in there Michael, chuck a grenade.’

‘I’m out. Fuck it, I’ll just –’ There was a barrage of gunfire, then Michael made a horrible gurgling noise.

‘Dammit!’ Lindsay shouted, and there was the unmistakable, meaty sound of someone being stabbed repeatedly and screaming all the while.

‘Son of a bitch, son of a bitch!’ Lindsay was saying in rhythm with the screams.

Jon hurried down the corridor, and turned into a room in time to see Lindsay drop the bleeding body of a biker, wiping her knife on his pants as he died.

Michael was lying on the dirty floor, the red bloom of a bullet wound in his throat, but even as Jon watched the injury was fading.

Barely a minute later, Michael coughed and sat up, looking annoyed. Lindsay kissed his forehead and then helped him to his feet.

‘Fuck, I owe Gavin a hundred bucks,’ he said.

‘You make bets on who’ll die?’ Jon asked.

‘Sure. Might as well, right?’

‘I guess,’ Jon said, finding their comfort with death bizarre.

He trailed the couple up to the third floor, hanging back and watching the crew clear the building with the methodical relentlessness of a bulldozer. It was almost enjoyable, except for the noise. Jon appreciated competence, and despite their joking, the Fake AH hadn’t got to where they were without being very good at their work.

Still, wild cards couldn’t be avoided.

‘Fuck!’ Geoff shouted from further up the corridor.

Jon turned in time to see him duck, and something small and black flew over Geoff’s head. It bounced down the tiled hall and stopped a few feet short of Jon.

He had time to register the smooth sphere of a military frag grenade before it exploded. The world went white hot.

 

*

 

He came back to himself to Jack cursing, and the whole crew gathered around him. 

‘Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ’ she said, breaking through the ringing in his ears. ‘Hold still, okay?’

There were hands on him, pressing him down, and a tearing, burning pain in his guts. His legs felt searing hot, and he couldn’t move them when he instinctively tried to bring up his knees to protect himself.

The pain was incredible, but the lack of response from his legs bothered him far more. He tried to move his arms, and found that they answered, despite the hands holding him down.

‘Gavin, give me the gun,’ Jon whispered, turning to Gavin where he knelt, white-faced and clutching Jon’s shoulder to hold him still.

‘What?’ Gavin asked, turning frightened eyes on him.

‘Gun,’ Jon repeated, feeling wetness on his lips. His chest felt heavy, and getting the breath to speak was far too much effort. He knew he wasn’t going to survive, it didn’t take a genius to put the pieces together, and the last thing he wanted was to die slowly and in agony.

Gavin wasn’t answering, frowning as though Jon wasn’t making sense, and Jon could see the pistol strapped to his thigh. It was easier to just reach for it.

He put the last of his strength into pulling the gun towards himself.

‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ Jack asked, reaching with bloodied hands to stop him.

Jon just shook his head. Better a bullet than a slow death. He pressed the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.

 

*

 

He came to with a gasp, his body whole but raw with newness. He had never grown accustomed to dying. 

He was still lying in the hall, his own blood pooling on the shattered tiles around him, and when he pushed himself up he could see Geoff and Michael standing nearby, heads together in solemn conversation. The rest of the crew were picking through the rooms further down the corridor, piling drugs and guns outside the doors to decide what was worth keeping.

‘Is it over?’ Jon asked, surprised by the quiet.

Geoff’s head whipped round, and his sleepy eyes went wide.

‘Holy shit!’ he said, looking at Jon as though he’d seen a ghost. ‘You shot yourself in the head!’

‘I was dying. It hurt!’ Jon complained.

‘Yeah, but you scared the dicks out of me,’ Geoff said, coming over and helping him up. The drying blood stuck unpleasantly to the back of his tattered vest and shirt, and Jon knew he’d have to scrap everything he was wearing.

The others quickly gathered, drawn by the surprise of hearing a dead man’s voice in their comms.

Michael looked thoughtful. ‘You’re not shocked to be alive. Did you know you’d come back?’

‘It’s not the first time,’ Jon said.

‘No wonder Flynt Coal likes you. Somehow he always knows!’ Lindsay said.

‘Seriously?’ Geoff said. ‘You’re immortal?’

Jon nodded. ‘So far. Why did you think I was so interested in you guys?’

‘You’re a journalist, you’re supposed to be interested. We’re fucking interesting people.’

‘Yeah, people like me,’ Jon agreed, smiling at the petulance in Geoff’s voice. He seemed to be taking Jon’s unexpected resurrection as a personal slight.

‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ Geoff demanded, looking delighted and put-out all at once. It was an interesting combination of expressions, and Jon couldn’t help but laugh.

‘Ya know, didn’t want to make a big thing of it. You don’t have to like me just because I’m like you,’ Jon said.

‘Are you kidding me? If we like you, we like you. We know a bunch of immortals we can’t stand. Why do you think Rooster Teeth operates out of Liberty City and we’re on the other fucking coast? They tried expanding over here, but we couldn’t work with them. Joel Heyman might be the oldest immortal in existence, but that just means he’s had thousands of years to make himself the world expert on being a pain in the ass,’ Geoff said.

‘Yeah, Gavin wants to go and take lessons from him,’ Michael added, grinning.

‘I do not!’ Gavin insisted.

‘Nah, Gavin’s an expert already,’ Lindsay said, ruffling his hair.

Jon watched bemusedly as the Brit carefully rearranged his hair to look artfully mussed rather than just dishevelled.

‘So when did you first snuff it?’ Gavin asked, with typical tactlessness.

Jon just laughed.

‘1925. I’m probably a baby compared to some of you,’ he admitted. ‘I was a reporter back then, too. I was looking into the local speakeasies and got on the wrong side of a bunch of bootleggers. Tommy guns look kind of dumb in the movies, but they worked.’

‘On most people. Clearly not on you,’ Ryan pointed out.

Jon laughed again. Coming back to life had made him a little giddy. ‘Guess not.’

‘And no, you’re older than all of us,’Jack said. ‘We didn’t find out we couldn’t die until a few years ago. We thought we were the first. It wasn’t until we met the Rooster Teeth guys that we found out immortality has been a thing forever.’

Jon was honestly surprised at that. The crew worked with such reckless confidence that he’d assumed that the Fake AH was made up of very old immortals, long used to invincibility.

‘I haven’t died anywhere near as much as you,’ he said. ‘I know I’ll come back, but I’ve still been careful, and I don’t come back as fast as you. I was dead for a while there, wasn’t I?’

‘Yeah, but that’s just practice,’ Michael said. ‘We found that we came back faster the more often we died.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Jon said.

Ryan laughed. ‘You mean you don’t want to play? You’re no fun.’

‘Jesus, Ryan,’ Gavin complained. ‘Can’t we keep him for a while before you scare him off?’

‘Yeah, we only just got him!’ Lindsay agreed.

‘Got me?’ Jon said, raising one eyebrow. Much as he liked the crew, he was almost afraid to ask what being "got" meant.

‘Come on, you didn’t think we were going to let you just walk away after that,’ Geoff said. ‘You’re interesting, and we keep interesting people around.’

‘But I like my job,’ Jon protested.

‘Isn’t your job writing about us?’ Ray asked through the earpiece.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’ Geoff asked. He put an arm around Jon’s shoulders and leaned companionably close, grinning like a shark. ‘You know, Jon, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.’

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing a drabble for Satansprettyprose on tumblr, and it got way out of hand and accidentally joined up with one of my series. Oops?


End file.
